Wednesday, 22 June 2016

I have finally managed a window of opportunity to continue my Isle of Mull posts!

White-tailed Sea Eagles...what a joy to see these wonderful birds also on a few occasions Golden Eagles.. two truly awesome birds of prey!

We booked a Sea Watch on Loch na Keal with Mull Charters and enjoyed superb views of a White-tailed Sea Eagle followed or should I say pursued extremely closely by several Gulls!

19th April.

Great Northern Divers, Shags, Seals and Gulls were also to be seen from the boat. The weather was perfect with sunshine, a bright blue sky and hardly a breeze blowing!

The G N Diver looked as though it was refereeing the Gulls!!!

It looked to be an Eel the Gull was trying to swallow.

A lovely sight to see the G N Divers almost in their summer plumage!

I was chuffed to have managed a pic of a Shag proudly showing off it's crest!

Triplets!

The seals looked like rocks from a distance!

Beautiful scenery all around the Loch! What a splendid place to live and work!

22nd April

We had booked to attend one of the RSPB Eagle Watch sessions. Views of the nest was naturally distant, good views were had through scopes and bins!

We had good views of the female White-tailed Sea Eagle, he was on the nest! The chicks were due to hatch in 10 days time (2nd May). A Golden Eagle put in an appearance and it perched about 4-5 trees away from the nest causing some concern for the RSPB lady who was there, she said they had never had one perch like that before. It took off after about 5 minutes and returned later, also the female Sea Eagle. They both had a Buzzard mobbing them as they flew up high in in the sky. It was the best sightings they had had for a couple of days, we were so lucky.

I came across this poem which perfectly describes the changeable weather experienced on Mull. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

Weather On Mull

A flat sea on the ferry from Oban to Craignure,
a misting of water on-deck,
low clouds over the islands
and the tips of Mull's crags disappear.

Driving off of the ferry, we see a loch-rainbow.
We pass under the blue skies of Salen, drive on
to arrive at the spittings doled out of the skies of Killiechronan.

We're baptised as we unload the car but later bear witness
to the birth of a dry, soughing breeze through the trees;
all night long it lulls us to sleep
and sweeps away at the midges.
Long may the wind blow in from Loch Na Keal!

Sunlight enthrones the crag-seated, Sea-Eagle,
brooding over our cottage, when we awake.
No sun-cream? No worries,
after breaksfast it’s drizzling again!

I don my waterproof trousers as well as my mac
so that the sun can broil me as I yomp the coastline around Calgary bay.

Looking over the cliff-top at Ardmore, the sunlight’s chased off by a reclaiming haze!
Not trusting the footing, I stay by the lighthouse as others go down to the dykes.
I watch the mink slinking below between sea-eroded, rain-silvered and seaweed-bedecked basalt.

When we go to Iona, the day is so bright and so still that even the midges settle to take their first bite.
So we sit out for a meal next to the Abbey, looking over Mull’s Sound,
and stubbornly remain while the wind cools our blood ever cooler
and wait for our lost order to arrive, but leave on the five-fifteen ferry, sweating as the sun beats down.

And tonight there’s a howling, a Muileach farewell!
The trees are bending and shaking and squalling goodbye!
The spitting’s returned to bid us adieu and to remind us of our coming to Mull.
It sings to us of Mull’s beasts and her birds and her geology,
it rejoins us to her circles of stories, told before ever a rune was carved down.

The weather bids us remember that Mull is an island,
a woman, always and ever changing,
never retaining a singular aspect,
always remaking, re-dressing, re-clothed
in her finery, spun out of wind, sunlight and rain.